Comments on: If I were* prescient…

By: ZaZa

ZaZa — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:04:48 +0000

You’re right. What’s hard for me, with my knee-jerk tendency to correct, correct, correct, is to remember when it’s dialogue, it has to be the way the character would say it. I’d have a jamoke from Joisey using the proper subjunctive. Heh.

By: HelenKay Dimon

HelenKay Dimon — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:30:16 +0000

You got it right. And, I totally agree about the Smart Bitches ad. Wish I had one there right about now. While Kerry is probably right that not everyone looks at (or cares about) the ad, if some of the 10 million visitors do then that’s a good use of promo dollars.

By: Susan Helene Gottfried

Susan Helene Gottfried — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 12:54:17 +0000

The Susans have it. It’s “If I were” — trust me. I’m an ex-copyeditor.

And yes, if we all had that vision, wouldn’t it have been sweet?

By: Suisan

Suisan — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:21:54 +0000

If I were. My Mom drilled it into my head.

My grandmother and her Girl Scout cronies had a decades-long joke about Hiawatha. They used to type up minutes to their meetings in the rhyme and meter of Hiawatha. She used to putter around the kitchen developing shopping lists in the meter of Hiawatha.

And now Hiawatha rears its bizarre head? I’m going to need copious amounts of liquor to deal with this.

By: Kerry Allen

Kerry Allen — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 09:54:00 +0000

Do you really look at ads, though? I find my eye skips over them. I noticed the Evermore ad on I Can Has Cheezburger, and my first thought was “Smart move, high traffic here,” but when I was scrolling past the ads sandwiched between the pictures with no registration of the products in question (and actually mild annoyance because I am so lazy, all that extra scrolling is a chore), I realized the book cover caught my eye only because I recognized it in the first place.

(This is no doubt an oversimplification, but as it was explained to me in my younger years, “was” is for things that are possible, “were” is for things that are impossible. The sticky part for me always seems to be that “possible” is often in the eye of the beholder.)

By: Alyssa

Alyssa — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:06:05 +0000

Ha ha! I was just thinking that, too.

By: cw

cw — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:44:23 +0000

Or even, “If I had been…”

But yeah, seriously. National coverage and linkage.